Calvin & Lesli

I can’t believe its July already. I never quite got used to thinking it was June in my head.  As the summer presses on, it has been pretty cool here in northern CA.  I am really happy when its cool because without air conditioning, life can get miserable when its hot.  Its been pretty nice recently, only a couple warm days…and our ten day outlook says its going to stay cool- well in the low 70s hopefully.  And, its not that I dislike the heat, because I grew up in it in Texas, and actually do think hot weather is fairly normal.  But, life here just isn’t pleasant when its 90 degrees…

Our neighbor has officially moved.  This is a bummer.  It was always so convenient to have a friend so close- to hang out on the back porch together drinking coffee on a Saturday morning, or to borrow a pan if needed, or to just let the dogs play almost every day together.  Bummer.  But, as much as we are feeling it, Mia is feeling it more, I think.

She just doesn’t understand why her best buddy can’t come out to play with her! This picture was taken today as she just sat out on the porch looking up at me, as if she was asking…”well, where is he?”  But last week she went out to his new house and got to play in his new backyard (they didn’t move too far away).  She had a good time.  She especially enjoyed harassing the German Shepherd next door.  :) Sheesh.

Also, my closest friend here in the area is moving too! Big bummer! She and her family are moving about 45 minutes south to San Jose.  It is definitely still in driving distance, but not as close as she was! I have often popped over to house after work to hang out for a couple hours until dinnertime.  This is a huge loss for me.

AND, if all this wasn’t enough, my best friend is leaving the country in two weeks without any plans of returning.  Sarah and her husband, Jonathan, are moving to Turkey indefinitely.  This is a really exciting time in their life, yet I am feeling the additional loss right now in mine! :)

One nice thing that is staying the same is our apartment.  As of the end of this month, we will have lived in the same place for 2 years.  This is a record in our almost 5 years of marriage, as most of you know.  We have never lived in the same place for more than 20 months, since we’ve been married.  This apartment is starting to feel like home.  (ask me again when we get new neighbors to replace the one that just left! haha)  Our neighborhood has been pretty quiet for the last 6 months, which is a huge blessing.  We are appreciating the blessing of having our 2 bedroom apartment, especially when family or friends visit.  We also enjoy the large living room to hang out with our guests when they come over! We feel like we know the area well now and are always appreciative to live so close to the highway, which gets us places pretty quickly! We have found fun, safe places to walk Mia at night and on the weekends.  And of course she is used to barking at the little Pomeranian next door, incessantly.  And although we had previously briefly looked into moving, nothing we saw was in a good location or as affordable, compared to what we have now.  So this is home for now.

More later,

Lesli

We love our Dads! Happy Father’s Day to you all!

Calvin and Lesli

Sorry for the silence everyone! We just haven’t been on top of updated our blog the past couple weeks.  We are back though!

Last weekend we had the privilege of spending some time with Calvin’s parents and sister here in Oakland.  We really enjoyed their trip last summer when we went to Muir Wood, Stinson Beach, Pier 39, etc.  This summer we all went to the island of Alcatraz, the Oakland zoo, and among other things, church, shopping, and On the Border.  We really appreciate their visit.  It means a lot to us that family would come out and visit us here in California.  (we’ve said it before, but anyone is welcome to come see and stay with us! we love company!!)

So, we didn’t get too many pictures, but here are a few snapshots of our time together:

Speed scrabble…yep, we played a lot :)

Family picture:

A few pictures from the zoo:

Lesli

I first made this recipe in Russia. I think I found it on a vegan blog (and just use normal dairy products instead of soy). We both really like it! Its kind of like a spice cake, but the spices come from seeping tea bags in milk and adding it to the ingredients.  This time I made it with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting instead of a buttercream frosting.  It turned out great!

Lesli

Here is a picture of our whole small group, in one place, at the same time! (minus one baby)

Calvin and Lesli

Saturday we drove out to a big regional park in our area.  It was so beautiful! We loved being in the middle of the park- no one around, no sounds of cars or people, just the wind in the grass and birds up above. It was great! Very relaxing!

It took us an hour to hike up to this lookout point. Isn’t it gorgeous?

The more interesting parts of our hike were as follows:

1) The cows roam about freely in this park, so they stand next to the path and in the fields right where you are walking.  The dogs were a bit freaked out by the them, but the cows didn’t really seem to be afraid of us.

2) We saw TWO two-foot Gopher snakes on our path during our hike. They were freaky, but didn’t seem to be bothered by us.  The dogs didn’t even notice them!

(not the snakes we saw, but this is a picture of a Gopher snake)

3) We took Mia and her best bud, Scooter- which was a lot of fun.  We kept them on-leash the whole time (because of the cows, snakes and mountain lions) and they ran right next to each other the whole time. It was so cute. They had fun running on the path and getting a lot of exercise and energy out!

4) Regional parks in our area (usually the ones up in the hills) always have signs that warn you to ‘beware of mountain lions’.  This really creeps me out. We have never seen one, of course, but its just freaky to me knowing that they are out there and could be so close to us.  Freaky.

Not the best video, but it shows how secluded we were on this trail:

One thing we both really enjoy about living in California is having such great places to spend time outdoors- parks, beaches, woods, etc. Its nice to get away for a few hours, outside of the city, and just relax in God’s creation. :)

Lesli

Today, was again, one of those days where I had a fairly unproductive day at work, so I set my energy to being productive at home.  Tonight I did a little cooking and baking!

Dinner: Calzones

Stuffed with cheese, pepperoni, green peppers, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fresh basil:

Yummy goodness oozing from it!

My basil is actually doing pretty well so far. I planted quite a bit more seeds in the pots this time!

Then, while Calvin was doing this:

:) haha, poor Mia :)

I did this:

Mini chocolate cupcakes with a marshmallow, meringue frosting:

Everything turned out great tonight. I am pretty happy with this chocolate cake recipe. I’ve tried a few and this one is pretty good (its Martha Stewart).  And since I don’t like butter cream frosting I thought I would try out a meringue frosting instead. Its pretty good. :)

Lesli

look what I found!!! The reindeer ears! Man, these take me back. At first glance I couldn’t find a picture with our other dogs in Arlington with these on…but I am pretty sure we have some somewhere.

Apparently Mia does not like them.  She was a pretty good sport though…but probably didn’t understand why we were laughing so hard at her.  :) I’ll have to remember where they are for this year’s family Christmas picture. :)

HAHAHAHAHA!

We had to completely gut one of our closets because we have come to the conclusion we have moths eating holes into our clothes.  For a few months we have been seeing random holes in our clothes, but hadn’t figured out where they were coming from.  Finally, after asking a friend, and showing her the holes, she said they looked like moth holes.  Drat! So, we looked online for solutions and decided to go with cedar to repel the darn vermin.  (unfortunately I am allergic to cedar, but we’ll see if having these around affect me…our other options were moth balls, which are supposedly toxic; lavender, but I hate the smell of lavender; or cedar…so we went with cedar) We bought cedar circles you put on your hangers, and also a pack of small balls that you put between your clothes.  Hopefully this will help and nothing else will get ruined. 

But hey, now my closet is clean! Very excited about that. :)

Lesli

After eating our deep dish pizzas, we walked through downtown Chicago to Millennium Park.  It is a really nice park area where they have planted a lot of tulips this time of year, they have outdoor concerts, and is near the Art Institute.

“The bean”:

Unfortunately we didn’t get to the Art Institute before it closed for the day.  So many people suggested we go there, we felt bad for not having at least briefly walked through it.  Oh well...next time.

We all really enjoyed Chicago as a city.  The people were friendly.  The streets were really clean.  There were a lot of trees and flowers.  It has really been kept up well and we enjoyed our time downtown.  (wish we could say the same for SF!)

Saturday evening we drove out to the Fermi lab (particle accelerator outside of Wheaton, IL).  Calvin showed his Berkeley national lab pass and we actually were granted access into the building to look around.  It was so funny! Calvin really enjoyed explaining everything that goes on there to us.  It was pretty interesting!

At the Fermi lab:

Sunday we went to The Moody Church, a non-denominational church named after the evangelist, D.L. Moody, in an older part of downtown Chicago.  It was great!

Other fun stuff:

Hanging out with Belle (our favorite cocker spaniel):

We really enjoyed our trip to Chicago! We would totally go back again! And of course, there was tons more to do than we actually did.  But technically, we weren’t there to sightsee as much as we were there to spend time with our dear friends. We were very blessed in Lord to be with such Godly people, who encourage us in our own lives and walk with the Lord.  We are very blessed to have them in our lives!

Lesli and Calvin